Scott Hug received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago and a Masters in communication from the Pratt Institute. Hug’s
work has been featured at John Connelly Presents, Deitch Projects, White
Box, D’Amelio Terras, and Greene Naftali, all in New York. His
work has been reviewed in the New York Times and has appeared
in the New Art Examiner and Zingmagazine. He was
awarded a Rema Hort Mann grant.
Scott Hug’s work deals with current social and political events,
investigating politics, pop culture and media obsession. He is
the founder of K48 Magazine. Hug often collaborates
with Michael Magnan. Their work is featured in a show Boys
Gone Wild at John Connelly Presents.
Name: Scott Hug
Where are you from: California, MO
Where do you live/work: Astoria, NY
Your website (if any): K48rules.com (for my zine, K48)
How do you normally come up with an idea or project for your
artwork? Can you run us briefly through your thought process and work
process?
Lots of research and looking… being aware of the things
going on in our society today and the influence of media, politics, war,
pop, and technology… since I work in a lot of different mediums,
the process varies but ultimately it’s about entropy and looking
outward and inward at the same time.
How has this specific site of Lower Manhattan influenced and/or
made its way into your works?
It’s been fun being downtown in the corporate work environment.
It definitely helped my own work ethic as far as coming to my studio
everyday like a day job. It was much easier than trying to work at
home from a small apartment out in Astoria and much more inspiring!
I thought a lot about 9/11 being so close to ground zero and witnessing
the orchestrated ‘parades of force’ and thinking how really
nothing has changed – billionaires are still fighting over the
property to see who will cash in on it and people still go to there
jobs and it’s still a corporate mind fuck. I definitely tried
to incorporate these ideas into my LMCC work.
Security is everywhere and finding the used and discarded Security
sign at Materials for the Arts was a fun oxymoron. I thought of several
ways to make a piece out of it and in the end decided that how I
found it was the perfect comment on Security today—‘false’ security.
So I just leaned it up against the wall as if Security is done. It
seems like it’s hard to escape these ideas in the beginning of
the 21st Century with the Media constantly in our faces, celebrity
culture, terrorism, ‘Killer Storms’… I also thought
about robots, machines, design and pop — remixing it… taking
the world and making it my own.
Is there any recurrent motif that appears in your works? What
is it and why?
The Olson Twins… I’m obsessed with them because I think
today they are the ultimate consumable pop stars. They seem so vulnerable
because they were born into the mainstream through a TV sitcom and
have since become almost victims of the marketing machine and in a
way are like machines themselves – they live for us to consume
them – they’re the ultimate ‘Ghost in the Shell’ or
shells of humans. Today anyone can be famous.
Who or what influences and inspires you?
NYC, the world, my friends and contemporaries, I admire a lot: Ray
Johnson, Cady Noland, Richard Prince, Diane Arbus, Gilbert & George,
Sue Williams, Agnes Martin, Mike Kelley, Ray Johnson, David Wojnarowicz,
Jenny Holzer, Tibor Kalman, Sue Coe, Darby Crash, Jack Smith, Raymond
Pettibon, Barbara Kruger, Jim Shaw, Andy Warhol, Christopher Wool…
